Model Rocket Building Spree

Model Rockets

Bracha spent both days building the Model Minutes Flying Spider. The small cardstock and foam kit turned out to be quite challenging. The little spider will make a nice companion for our larger Akavish Spider Rocket.

Flying Spider

While Bracha worked on the Spider, I built a few, less challenging, kits. First I put together an Estes Chrome Domes which took about three minutes. Opening the plastic bag is just about the hardest part of assembling the blue and gold rocket. It's nice looking, though, and seems well designed.

Next I built an Edmonds Aerospace Geminee. As is true of all of Rob Edmonds's kits, the Geminee was easy to assemble and trim. I've built several of his "Thunder" series of larger boost gliders. This was the first of his smaller kits that I have assembled. The Geminee is a boost glider with two gliders which seperate at apogee and glide back to the ground.

I followed the Geminee with a Semroc Astronautics Hydra VII - the tall blue rocket in the photograph above. This rocket can fly on a cluster of seven(!) motors. I'm planning to launch it using three C6-5 motors. It'll be my first cluster launch.

Next up was another boost glider - the HL-20 Lifting Body by Quest. The kit was on sale for $5 at Discount Rocketry the last time I ordered from them. Assembly was not difficult. I still need to paint the canopy and trim the model so it glides well.

HL-20 Lifting Body

Finally, I built a Semroc Astronautics Scorpion. This is a nice rocket with plywood fins, a nylon parachute, and 24-mm motor mount.

Finally, I built another little boost glider, the Sparrow by Starlight Model Rockets.

This was the first time in a long time that we built any small rockets. After many weekends working on my Upscale Omega/Cineroc is was nice to see things to completion in a short length of time. I didn't spend as much time on finishing the rockets as I probably should have. I didn't fill and sand the fins as much as I sometimes do or spend as much time painting the rockets. But I'm happy with the results.